>Re-PHOTO

We were staying in Matlock Green, a short walk from the centre of Matlock, and from outside our hotel we could see the Parish Church on a hill in Old Matlock, as well as Riber Castle, known locally as ‘Smedley’s Folly’ on a hill top overlooking the area where it was virtually impossible to get a decent water supply. The mock-gothic castle was constructed between 1862 and 1866 as a private home for John Smedley, an industrialist who as well as running Lea Mills also built the large Smedley’s Hydro in the centre of Matlock, turning the town into a spa resort attracting visitors from around the world.

The Hydro was used as a military intelligence school in WW2 and is now the headquarters of Derbyshire County Council. Lea Mills, a few miles to the south, was founded by his father (also John Smedley) and Peter Nightingale in 1784 is the world’s oldest manufacturing factory in continuous operation, though it now makes expensive designer knitwear rather than ‘Long Johns’ and other more workaday clothing.

After visiting Lumsdale I walked up to the church, then down a steep path and into the centre of Matlock. It seems a pleasant place in winter, though probably rather crowded with tourists during the summer months, and I was pleased to find both a Gregg’s and a Wetherspoons close together as after my walk I was both a little hungry and thirsty.

I spent some time wandering around the town before the others returned from their trip to the panto, enjoyong the fading light and then phtographing some of the shops; there do seem to be rather a lot of antiques/junk shops and others with interesting window displays. Later after we met up, we had a meal in a Thai restaurant before a leisurely stroll in a rather circuitous stroll back to our hotel.

More from Matlock in Matlock & Lumsdale both before and after the Lumsdale pictures.

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My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

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Lumsdale is a remarkable site, and one which is well worth visiting as I did on Saturday morning, having decide against going to a pantomime in Chesterfield with several of my family of various ages. It was only a short walk from the pub we were staying at in Matlock Green.

It had been an industrial site certainly since Roman times, when they are thought to have had a lead assay and casting depot smelter there, from which a number of large lead ‘pigs’ have been found, though I don’t think there are any Roman remains now as over the years it has hosted various other industries. It is a narrow valley with a small stream, the Bentley Brook, cascading down and at one time providing power for a number of mills, with several mill ponds to provide a constant water flow for the machinery.

The main area is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, cared for by the Arkwright Society, and “is one of the best water-powered industrial archaeological sites in Great Britain: it is unusual to see so extensive a use of water power in such a relatively small area.” There are the ruins of around six mills in their area of the site. This was where the industrial revolution began, before the larger mills of the Derwent Valley now in the World Heritage site.

Parts of the site were quite crowded, with only narrow places on which to stand and a camera club outing on much of them. At least I did feel that if I slipped on some of the narrower muddy paths and fell down some distance I would be noticed.

Winter is a good time to go, as there would be rather a lot of leaves to get in the way in summer. I walked up the valley, and it was a pleasant walk and not too far, but you can get a bus which passes the top of the valley, where there is also quite a lot of parking. And when I found I would have to wait 20 minutes for a bus back to Matlock I decided instead to walk back a slightly different way, which was also a good decision, as I found a few more things to make pictures of, including a larger mill converted to residential property.

More pictures from Lumsdale in Matlock & Lumsdale

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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It was good to get out into the country, though it would have been better if it had been rather less muddy as we struggled to get up the steep footpath to the sycamore at the top of Oker Hill.

The hill, above the Derbyshire village of Oaker is said to have got its name from a Romans who had a lookout post on the top of what they called the hill of Occurus, though I’m rather doubtful of this derivation. Certainly the Romans were here, and are likely to have chosen the hill as a lookout, as it has wide views all around (though a little blocked now by trees and bushes0, but why should they call it Occurus, which doesn’t appear to be a common Roman name or Latin word.

Derbyshire was important to the Romans as a source of lead, with many small mines in the area, possibly including some at Oaker, and certainly in other parts of the area around Matlock, though debates still rage about where the centre of the industry, the Roman town of Lutudarum actually was, though there is a strong case for Wirksworth. Derbyshire remained an importance source of lead until the end of the 18th century, but lead was still mined in the county well into the 20th century.

But Oker Hill became famous for another reason, a local legend of two brothers which became the subject of a sonnet written by Wordsworth in 1791 when he stayed the night in a nearby farmhouse. The sonnet tells of two – Will and Tom Shore – climbing to the top of the hill and each planting a tree, before parting to go their separate ways, never meeting again on this earth, but their trees entwining their arms.

Presumably there were still two trees in 1791, but now only one remains, and according to the local legend, the brothers quarelled and Tom left the area to seek his fortune abroad, but died in poverty. His tree too withered, while Will, who stayed at home, prospered, as did his tree.

Now the only industry on Oker Hill is farming, though probably most of those who live in Oaker drive to nearby towns such as Matlock to work. We came down the hill by a slightly different route, hoping to avoid the worst of the mud, but found ourselves having to wade through deep water-filled tractor tracks, the water just briefly overtopping my boots as I hurried across.

Close by was a reminder of how much life in this area has changed in the last hundred years or so, a small stone wall around Grace’s Well. It was a little tricky to photograph as my feet were sliding in the mud as I did so. The well was built just after 1900 for Grace, a member of the Greatorex family who still farm the area and some of whose grandchildren still live around here, and provided water for her family. Mains water only arrived here in the 1920s or 1930s. I thought about this as I washed the mud of my boots with several gallons of running water back in Matlock.

A few more pictures – and Wordsworth’s sonnet in full – on My London Diary at Matlock – Oker Hill

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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This isolated facade is all that remains of Anhalter Bahnhof, once the largest railway station in the Europe. Designed by Franz Heinrich Schwechten in 1872 it was opened in 1880  by Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. You could take a train from here to  Dresden, Prague, Vienna and to places as far away as Rome, Naples and Athens.

During World War II it was one of three stations used to deport Berlin’s Jews, taking over 9,600 in 116 trains to Theresienstadt in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, from here they were transferred to concentration camps. They left Anhalter station in carriages, often attached to other trains rather than in the cattle trucks used elsewhere.

It was severely damaged in by bombing in November 1943, and mostly destroyed in February 1945. It took some time to restore rail services, and they only resumed fully in Novemebr 1947 and repairs continued until the following May. The station was in West Berlin, but the rail services to it ran through East Berlin from Soviet-controlled East Germany, and in 1952 Deutsche Reichsbahn switched them all to Ostbahnhof in the Eastern sector and the station closed. It was demolished despite public outcry in 1960 with just this fine entrance at the centre of its façade with its Ludwig Brunow  Day and Night sculptures kept. These were replaced by replicas during restoration in 2003-4.

Suburban train services continued to serve the Anhalter Bahnhof S-Bahn station which was in West Germany. Although this north-south line had first been planned in 1892, this part of the line was only built in 1939 as a part of Hitler’s public works programme to employ unemployed workers, although parts of the station had been finished in 1936.

Our walk continues to a street full of museums, with the Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin, ((House of Representatives) a grand neo-Renassiance property home to Berlin’s State Parliamenton one side

and Martin-Gropius-Bau with shows of contemporary art, photography & archaeology on the other. We went in briefly but didn’t stay long.

The helium balloon is a tethered tourist attraction which we had seen earlier from beside the memorial at the top of the Kreuzberg in Viktoria Park. It goes up 150m for you to admire all-round views of Berlin for 15 minutes. We decided it was too expensive.

Just down the street is a permanent free open-air exhibition ‘Topography of Terror’ on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters which documents in some detail the horrors of Nazism.

Above the covered exhibition is a walkway alongside a section of the Berlin Wall, the concrete barrier which divided the city in two from 1961 to 1989.

And through a hole made in the wall we could see a Berlin Bear in front of a grim office building, which I think is a part of the former Reich Air Ministry (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) whose main entrance is around the corner on Wilhelmstrasse, built on the orders of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring between 1935 and 1936. Designed by Ernst Sagebiel (1892-1970) when built it was the largest office building in Europe with its 2,800 rooms, 7 km of corridors and over 4,000 windows. After the war it became the Soviet military headquarters, then the home of the GDR Council of Ministers.  According to rumour the many swastikas on its blocks of marble are still there, as the blocks were simply turned around to hide them. At the start of the 1953 East German Uprising it was stormed and briefly occupied by 25,000 striking workers before Soviet troops arrived. It has Soviet-era murals on the north side, but I didn’t think a great deal of them. It now houses the German Ministry of Finance.

Our walks around Berlin continue in later posts.

Previous Berlin post
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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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Our usual end of year walk came a couple of days earlier than usual as we were travelling up to Matlock for a couple of days before the New Year to where our younger son and family now live.  The trains were not back to work normally on December 27th with engineering work still taking place on some lines so we decided not to travel too far. Even so we had to change our normal route to Brentford, as there were no trains running there, but it was simple enough to take the train to Twickenham and get a bus to Brentford – and the same bus route would take us back from Hammersmith to Twickenham for the train home.

I grew up in the area and occasionally visited Brentford in my youth, more usually simply going through it on the bus on our way to Kew Bridge and Kew Gardens – back when the entrance fee was a penny. Then it was a cheap family day out, and my parents were keen gardeners, with my father growing large quantities of fruit and veg for our family and some relatives in our and their gardens and on an allotment, as well as looking after one of the best gardens in Hounslow for a few paid hours a week.

Brentford was  notable for several things as we peered out from the top of the bus. First came the canal, usually busy with boats at the lock and in front of the large goods sheds. The High Street had its interests too, not least the beehive on the Beehive pub (my father was a bee-keeper on a moderately large scale too) and then came the gas works, on both sides of the road with its powerful smells, and the River Thames as we scrambled down the stairs to get off at Kew Bridge.

Bits of the old Brentford remain, both along and off from the High St, but much has changed, particularly both by the canal and the river, with large blocks of flats replacing much of the docks and industrial sites.

One small disappointment was that a part of the Thames path was closed; at least the detour was no further than the actual route, though it did deny us seeing the boat yards still he from the path at the back of the image above.  There is so much to see along by the river on the way to Kew, and beyound at Strand on the Green it gets more picturesque with a couple of well-known pubs. Despite being December, it was warm enough in the sun to sit comfortably on a bench to eat our sandwiches.

Unfortunately the path soon leaves the river, but we were in any case on our way to Chiswick House, or rather the gardens around it, where we stopped for coffee and cakein the rather more modern cafe.

A short walk along the busy Burlington Lane took us to a footpath leading to Chiswick Church, and Hogarths tomb, and, a few yards further on, back to the river.

The sun was going down as we made our way along Chiswick Mall and then Hammersmith Mall to the bridge, turning away there to make our way to the bus station. It took us some time to find our bus stop, thanks to some rather poor signage inside the shopping centre, but soon we were on the way home after a very pleasant walk.

Many more pictures at Brentford to Hammersmith

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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

We walked up the gentle slope of  Methfesselstrasse to reach the top of the Kreuzberg in Viktoria Park, past some varied architecture mainly from the nineteenth century but including a modern extension to a nineteenth century house which is a youth centre.

We couldn’t resist a short walk past the park entrance to admire this rather strange baroque mock-medieval castle built  by arcitect Karl Teichen at 28 Methfesselstrasse as a reception and pub for Schultheiss after the company took over the Tivoli brewery 1891. Differing sources give the building date as 1891 and 1901.

The view down the hill from close to the monument at its top is towards the centre of Berlin; the road at the bottom of the park is roughly 200 ft down.

At the top of Viktoria Park in Kreuzberg is what looks like a cast-iron cathedral spire, Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1821 Pussian National Monument for the Liberation Wars, victory in which freed Prussia from French rule under Napoleon in 1813-14. Schinkel modified the spire of his design for a national memorial church after the money couldn’t be found to build this, to creat the monument for King Frederick William III of Prussia.

The king officially inaugurated it 1821, though it wasn’t really finished, and some of the statures which surround it were only plaster models painted to look like cast iron. The monument stands on top of a hill, and at the event the king gave the area which had been called Götze’scher Berg its current name of Kreuzberg (cross mountain) because the spire is topped by an iron cross. I photographed most id not all of the statues, but haven’t posted them here.

The iron cross gets it shape from the cross pattée adopted by the Teutonic Order in Acre, Jerusalem around 1190. William II was a great adopter of iron for almost every purpose and established the iron cross as a Prussian military medal in 1813, making the first award of it to his late wife. Later  the German Army adopted it as their symbol.

We weren’t able to take one of the tours of the huge vault which is apparently under the monument, where some of the original full-size plaster models of the figures on it are still stored.

From close to the monument you can look down between modern blocks to the Tivoli Brewery, taken over by Schultheiss as their second brewery in Berlin  in 1891. Production ceased here in 1994 but the brewery has many excellent listed examples of industrial brick architecture and  has been transformed into a new residential area called Viktoria-Quartier. I had a beer in the small cafe (probably once a public toilet) close to the monument, but can’t remember if the beer was Schulteiss.

When the monument was erected it was only on a small patch of land at the top of the hill, and was in danger of becoming hidden by new developments. To avoid this Berlin acquired the land around it to create a park in 1887 and laid out following the design of Berlin city garden designer Hermann Mächtig (1837-1909) who renamed the park Victoria Park in honour of the British Queen Victoria. His waterfall first flowed in 1893 using gas driven pumps to raise around 13,000 litres of water to the top. The flow was stopped in 1914 and not resumed until 1935. The pumphouse was destroyed by British bombing in 1944.  We’d been sensible enough to plan a route that involved walking down rather than up the rather steep hill down which an impressive stream cascades.

The monument was a little lost in haze when I made this picture, perhaps some of it caused by spray from the waterfall.

At the bottom of the park is another fairly recent iron memorial to raped women,

And ‘Der seltene Fang‘ (The Rare Haul), an rather erotic 1896 bronze by Ernst Herter, showing a fisherman struggling with a mermaid he has captured in his net.

These decorations on a bar in Grossbeerenstrasse say they are from 1912 by A Pescht; one has the number 495. They are still there at No 54; the building  by Grumach and Troschkel dates from 1876-1877 and is in a protected historic buildings area.

The Landwehr Canal and U-Bahn. The canal, almost 7 miles long was built between 1845 and 1850  to link the River Spree above and below the centre of Berlin.

Kammermusiksaal Hallesche Str, built in 1874/1875 by Hermann Blankenstein and A. Reich, as the Askanisches Gymnasium (1875–1929) partly destroyed in 1945.

Berlin Kreuzberg Tempodrom a multi-purpose event venue in Berlin moved here to a permanent building in 2001.

More from Berlin shortly.

Previous Berlin post
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There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

We had to go to the Alexanderplatz, not just because it was only five minutes walk from the flat we were staying in. But also it seemed to be a good place to go to for an ice cream.

Ices were no problem, but otherwise the place was depressing. A wide open space with people lost and wandering, surrounded with architecture largely of little interest.

The only real exception was the Teacher’s House, again architecturally bland, but enlivened by a band of mural with a Mexican feel.

I took far too many pictures of that mural, mainly with the 35mm equiv on the Fuji X100. The light was getting a little low.

To its side was a row of tents, with a rather more  interesting shape.

I moved in closer and angled the camera up

and photographed the other side

and the back.

But it remained an awkward subject, a long thin strip, unsuited to my 1.5:1 aspect ratio.

I stepped back and took a final frame of the whole building then went to photograph the other feature of the area featured in the tourist guides, the World Clock.

I thought it looked more impressive if I combined it with the TV tower, but perhaps this was rather misleading.

and I moved to see it from another viewpoint, before going in closer.

and closer still

Underneath the clock a woman was playing a guitar

And there was a proper clock so I could tell what time it really was.

There were some fountains too, but by now  I was getting hungry and gave up taking photographs.Our walks around Berlin continue in later posts.

Previous Berlin post
______________________________________________________

There are no adverts on this site and it receives no sponsorship, and I like to keep it that way. But it does take a considerable amount of my time and thought, and if you enjoy reading it, a small donation – perhaps the cost of a beer – would be appreciated.

My London Diary : London Photos : Hull : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

________________________________________________________

Just published by Cafe Royal Books is Saint Patrick’s People, with 27 black and white images by John Benton-Harris, from his many years of photographing St Patrick’s Day events in America and Ireland. He has also photographed them extensively in the UK and I’m fairly sure he is out there now in London continuing his work on the subject.

Born in New York, Benton-Harris came to the UK to photograph Churchill’s funeral and has lived here since, contributing greatly to photography in this country, both through his own photography, some of which you can also see in another CRB book, The English, and also as a lecturer and curator.

It was his vision and contacts that lay behind the major Barbican show introducing those who were not long-term readers of Creative Camera (they published his pictures in two features in 1971 and many other now well-known US names) to post-war American photography, ‘American Images – Photography 1945-1980‘ in 1985, though most of the credit went unfairly to his British collaborators, and later shows included the 1986 ‘Let Truth Be the Prejudice‘ and 1989 ‘Through the Looking Glass‘ Photography Art in Britain 1945-1980.

You can see more of John Benton-Harris’s work, both pictures and a little writing on his web site.

Published at the same time on CRB is another fine book, Chris Killip — Huddersfield 1974 and other recent volumes include Wolverhampton 1978 by Chris Steele-Perkins. All worth a trip to your favourite photographic bookshop or you can order them on the web at Cafe Royal Books.